Patient monitoring devices, such as devices monitoring a patient's vital signs, are designed to identify physiological problems experienced by patients and to alert clinicians to those problems. Typically, clinicians are alerted to such problems via the generation of alarms, such as auditory or visual alarms, or alerts sent directly to pagers or personal digital assistants (PDAs) carried by clinicians. Alarms may also be generated by patient monitors when problems occur with the monitor itself, such as a low battery, disconnection of patient monitoring lead, etc.
Hazards may arise when alarms go unrecognized or are not acted upon for a period of time. Clinicians responsible for monitoring patient alarms may receive frequent visual and audio alarm notifications for those alarms. Such repetitive exposure to alarm notifications can cause a clinician to become de-sensitized to the alarms, which affects the timeliness of his or her responses. Additionally, clinicians may begin to ignore alarms as a result of the frequent occurrence of false alarm events, which may cause the clinician to believe the alarms are unimportant and do not need a response.
Alternatively, a clinician may desire to attend to all alarm events, but may be unable to respond to alarm events in a timely manner because the clinician's work flow is too heavy. Several alarms may occur at once, and/or a hospital floor may be understaffed, which may create a scenario in which it is impossible for a clinician to respond to all alarm events in a timely manner.
Unheeded alarms negatively affect patient care, and can lead to undesired outcomes for patients. An alarm event may indicate a deterioration of a patient's physiological condition, which often requires immediate attention. Alternatively, technical alarms may occur that indicate the inability of a patient monitor to accurately monitor a patient's condition.
Thus, methods and systems are needed for monitoring and measuring clinicians' responses to alarms.